


What Was, What Is, What Will (Never) Be

by Shadow_of_Quill



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Dirty Secret, I Don't feel so well, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/referenced Bill/Ford, M/M, Nightmares, Teen!Stans, Whumptober 2020, abandoned, same coin theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:22:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27201736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_of_Quill/pseuds/Shadow_of_Quill
Summary: In countless worlds, Ma (often Caryn, sometimes not) and Pa (often Filbrick, sometimes not) Pines are surprised by the birth of twins when they'd been assured there was one child growing.(gee, Frills, you sure have some kind of sense of humour)
Relationships: Ford Pines/Stan Pines
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	What Was, What Is, What Will (Never) Be

In countless worlds, Ma (often Caryn, sometimes not) and Pa (often Filbrick, sometimes not) Pines are surprised by the birth of twins when they'd been assured there was one child growing.

In countless worlds, the twins are named Stan and Stan, Stanford and Stanley.

In countless worlds, a bad flu sweeps through Glass Shard Beach the winter the twins are thirteen. In many of them, Stanley falls ill badly enough to weaken certain barriers in his mind, and is so horrified by what lies behind them that it takes all his mother's and brother's love to convince him not to just give in and die then and there. In many others, Ford is the one who falls so ill, and Stanley feels that he would give up **anything** if it would give him a way to be sure his brother would survive.

But in this world, in Dimension 49-Interrobang-Tilde, _both_ of the Stan twins are desperately ill. Stanley is dazed, and confused, and terrified enough by the fear that his brother might die that when the barriers in his mind weaken he sees a chance of getting knowledge that could save Ford, and that drive lets him ignore the shame-guilt-horror of everything _else_ he sees there.

In Dimension 49-Interrobang-Tilde, at thirteen years old, Stanley Pines becomes aware that he is a fragment of an ageless monstrosity, a being whose crimes span realities, a cheat and a liar who has stolen lives and peace and hope and sanity.

A being whispered of as the Nightmare King.

A being who introduces himself to his newest victims as "Bill Cipher".

Stan remembers. Stan remembers Sixer after Sixer after Sixer, remembers "until the end of time", remembers "please call me a friend", remembers boiling coffee and bruises and clawing at his meat-puppet's skin till it peeled away.

Stan remembers casting spells of healing before letting his victims wake up, and watching with glee as patsy after patsy stand in front of a triangle-shaped window with no idea what he's used their bodies for, and the patsies all have the same face, and Stan feels sick but he chants out the spells of healing and he watches his thirteen-year-old brother sleep easier, breathe steadily, heal and recover and he dives back into the memories for more he can use to help.

Stan coughs so loud and hard he wakes Ford up, and Ford recites the spells back at him with stubborn trust, not knowing anything about them other than Stan telling him they're going to help. (Stan takes a moment to be grateful he hasn't remembered the spells for siphoning the caster's life away to restore the subject's, knows he'd have used them if he had and wouldn't that have made a pretty mess of a paradox, Stan draining himself for Ford, Ford draining himself for Stan.)

Stanley falls asleep and has nightmares of Stanford Pines after Stanford Pines after Stanford Pines, _Brainiac_ and _IQ_ and _Sixer, Sixer, Sixer!_ and all the things Bill did to all of them, twisted minds and twisted memories, broken fingers, broken trust, broken hearts... Stanley wakes up to his twin's sleeping face and the soul-deep knowledge that he will never make up for what he has done/will do.

Stanley remembers dying as Bill in Stanley Pines' mindscape. Stanley knows that the mindscape he died in held not a speck of knowledge of where Stanley Pines' soul came from.

All the terrible things he remembers doing, and Stanley Pines knows he is not the fragment who will avenge them.

Stanley rolls onto his back and stares past the bunk bed above him into the unknown depths beyond reality. "Great job here, Frills," he whispers. "Is this you screwing me over, or me screwing us both?"

There's no answer.

Stan and Ford both survive. Stan tortures himself for the rest of his life with the thought that Ford might have survived anyway, and his unlocking of his identity was pointless.

Stan's different, after that - he can't _not_ be, with memories of knowledge of countless dimensions constantly bubbling under his thoughts.

Their Ma isn't someone he wants to burden with the truth, but Ford notices and asks and Stan can't _not_ tell him, not when he knows how desperate for the truth Ford will always be (because he's so bad at recognising it, and Stan feels sick when he thinks of lying to his twin because his head is always going to be full of how easily (almost) every version of Sixer swallowed down every lie Bill ever told him) (and most of those who didn't were warned not to by their twin brother, gee, Frills, you sure have some kind of sense of humour).

Ford doesn't believe him.

Ford doesn't believe him and Stan wants to laugh, to cry, to scream, because how did he forget that Ford didn't believe it when Stanley Pines told him the truth? (Because there were worlds where he _did,_ and c'mon, Sixer, we're thirteen, I can't have betrayed you badly enough to lose you _already!)_

Maybe Ford might believe him if Stan's grades improved any, but Stan remembers how wrong the science they're taught is and Stan remembers thirty contradictory laws of physics but not which ones apply to the dimension they're in, and Stan also has developed the stupidest mental block ever and keeps forgetting that this world's mathematics are in base-10.

Stan remembers quotes from ten years in the future and five dimensions over, Stan remembers how Bill has screwed with the history of fifty thousand versions of Earth but not which changes happened to which Earth (and it turns out "That's how it happened _somewhere!"_ is an argument that gets a big fat zero on school exams).

Stan has a head full of knowledge from countless dimensions, and it's making him fail every class in school.

Stan has a body that's just starting puberty, and if Bill thought pain was funny he should really have tried hormones (except the thought of what Bill might do to a teenager, the memories of what he's done/will do to _Dipper,_ who Stan's probably never going to meet but he knows he'll love that kid so much because he _saw_ it, saw it and laughed at it and oh, Moses, the things he's _done_ to this family - Stan doesn't wish Bill experiencing hormones on _anyone)._

Stan has a body that's just starting puberty and memories of _other_ ways he's tormented Sixer, memories of Sixer wanting sex, memories of convincing Sixer that he _should_ want sex, memories of Sixer wanting his twin (wanting _Stan)_ and memories of him being disgusted by the very idea...

Stan doesn't know if _his_ twin wants him, if his Stanford is gay or asexual, sex-repulsed or sex-positive or sex-neutral, Westermarck-affected or very much not. Bill ran into all of those, in every combination, and Stan doesn't _know._

So he finds out. He gets Ford alone, where there's no one watching them (not even Bill), and he makes sure he's not got Ford blocked in or trapped, and he leans forwards and presses their lips together as gently as he can.

And Ford lets him. Ford doesn't push him away, Ford doesn't panic, Ford blinks at him when Stan pulls back but he doesn't look disgusted, just surprised. Stan smiles back at him, butterflies in his stomach making him feel sick (and he's just remembered that Bill had been disappointed to learn those were metaphorical), and doesn't bring up that that was his first kiss. He knows it was Ford's first kiss, too, and he feels a curl of hot possessive pleasure at the thought. (There are worlds where _Bill_ takes Ford's first kiss, and Stan is smugly proud to steal that from himself here.)

He's not good enough for Ford, and he knows he doesn't deserve Ford. But he _wants_ Ford, and he thinks that this might just be one of the worlds where Ford wants _him._

Stanley Pines of Dimension 49-Interrobang-Tilde admits to himself that he's in love with his twin brother before they turn fifteen.

But Ford doesn't reciprocate, Ford is nervous and anxious, Ford doesn't want to think of himself as a queer/a faggot/a freak in this shocking new way. Maybe if they weren't related. Maybe if they weren't both male. But as it is, Stanley Pines is at an intersection of two reasons Stanford Pines would be ostracised for wanting him, and Ford daren't. (Stanley remembers digging out memories of how Pa reacted to the possibility of Ford being anything other than straight, and his reactions weren't always physical but they were always, always painful - "PAIN IS HILARIOUS!", Moses, the ways Bill _used_ those memories...)

Stanley smiles and assures Ford that it didn't count as Ford's first kiss, and it's not really a lie because 'first' kisses are as much a social construct as virginity - they're practically the _same_ construct, and isn't that a joke? - but it's close enough to a lie for Ford to believe him.

Stanley and Stanford try to pretend they aren't attracted to each other, aren't aroused by each other, and Stanford might even convince himself. Stanley's mostly trying to convince anyone who might use it as another excuse to pick on his brother.

Including their father. _Especially_ their father, and now Ford is aware he can be attracted to other boys he's _looking_ at them, and Stanley finds himself running interference to distract their father so Ford can find someone he's attracted to who isn't Stanley. Which doesn't feel great, but... Stanley doesn't deserve Ford. (Neither does anyone else in Glass Shard Beach, but it'll be a few years before Ford can leave and look further afield.) And it works! ...Which means their father is paying attention to Stanley, and their father's attention is always painful ("PAIN IS HILARIOUS!" - boy, does Stan wish he feels his own pain the way Bill felt everyone else's). 

Pa glares down at him, tells him he's useless he's worthless he's nothing, and Stan grits his teeth and glares at the floor and feels sick with Bill's memories of what he could do, what he did to the last being who disrespected him like this (and the one before that, and before that...). Stan isn't Bill, has none of Bill's powers to call on, but he remembers spells that would leave Pa squealing in agony, spells that would leave Pa suffering in silence, spells to kill him quick and spells that would kill him oh-so-slow...

Ford finds him on the beach, hidden in the Stan-o'-War (and Stanley knows it won't be finished, he knows they'll never sail away on it, but this dream that isn't as shared as he wants it to be is the surest comfort he has) and Stan turns to him and asks, "Why do I care about Pa?"

"What?" Ford asks, but Stan's mind is full of Bill's memories and he charges on, "I've wrecked whole dimensions because I _could,_ I turned my first family into Swiss cheese and used them for _fondue_ and they weren't near as crap to me as Pa is to either of us, so why the _fuck_ does Stanley Pines care more about his Pa than Bill-fucking-Cipher cared about his _whole family?"_

Ford's flinching back, looking scared, and right, he doesn't like being reminded that Stanley isn't only Stanley, or hasn't always been Stanley, or however he should be wording it (and if there's anything Stan-who-was-Bill knows, it's that how stuff's worded is _important)._ Stanley feels his shoulders drop, turns away, tries to swallow down the pain and self-disgust and everything and sound carefree and airy as he brushes aside everything he just said with, "Ah, forget it, Sixer, I'm overreacting again." He'd blame hormones but they won't be an acceptable excuse until thirty, forty years from now? (I'm screaming because of hormones, I'm crying because of hormones, I'm making myself sick picturing turning our Pa's bonemarrow into acid because of hormones -) Wait, they were excuses for _girls,_ weren't they? So he couldn't use that excuse anyway.

Ford rests a six-fingered hand on Stan's shoulder, and Stan can't stop himself from leaning back into it. "Wish I knew what the fuck Frills did to make me this," he grumbles. He's pretty sure Bill didn't even have the capacity for empathy or love or whatever-the-fuck this difference between Bill and Stan is, so either it's a consequence of a fragment growing out to be a whole person - and that would make sense, right, like how cuttings don't grow to look exactly like the tree or whatever they came from - or it's something the Axolotl decided to add in on purpose - and that would make sense too, and it's not like Stan's even mad about it exactly, but it feels kind of not-great to think maybe he's only a better person because an unknowable being decided to make him its personal art project.

Ford doesn't have an answer, but he doesn't pull away, and he doesn't leave. Stan lets himself pretend for a few seconds (minutes) (hours) that this might be one of the dimensions where Ford never leaves him behind, where they go together. (He tries not to wonder if he's already being suffocating.)

Stan is sixteen, and Ford is insisting he isn't attracted to Stan, and Bill had always dismissed Stan's attraction to Carla as pretense and opportunism, but she's smart and she's funny and she sees him as worth something, and it turns out Stanley Pines is capable of being in love with more than one person at once.

Ford gets - tetchy? irate? pissed off? - at having to share Stan's attention, because he's never had to before. Plus, every time he's around Carla he's expecting her to make fun of him.

Carla gets frustrated at having to share Stan's attention, because apparently being someone's boyfriend means he isn't supposed to care about anyone else. (Social expectations, ugh - there's a reason one of Bill's most effective ploys was offering his patsies the chance to destroy them.) Stan's pretty sure she thinks Ford is overreacting, or maybe she understands why he'd expect most people to make fun of him but feels insulted that he's obviously expecting it from _her._

Stan flops onto his bed and tells the ceiling (or Ford, whichever pays more attention), "Y'know, everyone says the answer to a love triangle's meant to be a threesome -"

"They what?" Ford yelps, homework forgotten. "Who says that?"

"- but that don't cover what to do if two of them don't like each other," Stan finishes. "I mean, I don't wanna lose Carla -"

"I can't picture her being happy that you want a threesome with her and some other girl," Ford snaps waspishly.

"Huh? No, I'm pretty sure she's straight, it'd be me and - another guy." Stan is absolutely not blushing, he is gonna _nail_ selling this implied-lie that he isn't talking about Ford.

Ford's staring at him. "Another guy?" He kind of sounds like Stan's torn his heart out, which is a consequence of selling that Stan isn't talking about Ford that Stan maybe didn't think through and isn't much liking, but there's no way out but through now so Stan gives him a shrug.

"Not like it matters; like I said, she don't seem to like him and he don't seem to like her, so!" He flicks his fingers, makes a stupid noise, ignores the nagging feeling something's wrong when no sparks of blue fire follow his hands.

"Maybe neither of them like having to share your attention," Ford snipes, turning back to whatever he's working on at his desk.

"That's what the threesome's meant to fix, Poindexter! Show them both that I can give them both my attention just fine!" Stan gives the back of Ford's head a bright smile.

Ford makes a scoffing noise, and Stan doesn't need to see his face to know he's rolling his eyes. "I suppose you're going to start spending time with her and this mystery guy now to try and change her mind?" 

Moses, Sixer's oblivious. Stan loves him for it, how he's so smart and so clueless both at the same time. "Been trying for a while, but they just ain't clicking."

Ford pauses. Stan can tell he's trying to work out who the 'mystery guy' is, and that he's never gonna get the right answer. (His Sixer - who is obviously objectively the _best_ Sixer - is less self-absorbed than some of them, but he's almost completely blind when it comes to stuff like this.) "Stanley, the only person you've been trying to convince Carla to spend time with is me," he says, shaking his head.

Stan smirks up at the ceiling. "That so?"

Ford doesn't say anything, and Stan looks down to see that he's turned and is staring at Stan with an expression Stan's never seen, not even as Bill. Stan stares back, smirk gone, and for a moment he wonders if maybe Sixer isn't that obvlivious after all - but then Ford turns back to his homework almost violently, and Stan remembers that even if Ford realises Stan wants him, Ford doesn't want to want _Stan._

Which it would be stupid to feel rejected about, so Stan absolutely doesn't. At all.

Carla breaks up with him for the hippy before a week's passed, and Stan goes with his stupider impulse and drives the guy's van off a cliff.

It would have made him feel better back when he was Bill. He's not entirely sure why it doesn't, now that he's Stan.

_The_ science fair is coming up. Stan makes his football-playing robot and amuses himself by engraving on its inner plates the chemical compositions of a cure for cancer, a bone-healing serum, a radiation-neutraliser....

Ford gets offered his chance at West Coast Tech. The principal tells Stan's family that Stanley is a worthless bum, and no one there disagrees with him.

Stanley stares blankly at the wall, and wonders if this feels less bad or worse for all his counterparts who don't remember being Bill, who didn't know this was coming.

There's an interesting thing about this moment. The events play through the same in so many worlds - Ford makes his perpetual motion machine, Stan yells at it and thumps the table it's on, the machine isn't working when the WCT assholes show up. But.

Sometimes the machine isn't working because the thump on the table jarred something inside it. Sometimes the machine isn't working because their high school doesn't have materials of a high enough quality to make it, and they overstress and burn out and break (and sometimes _that's_ because of Stan's thump, but sometimes it isn't). Sometimes the machine isn't working because someone decided that if they weren't going to get into West Coast Tech the six-fingered freak wouldn't either, and they snuck in after Stan had left and cut some wires.

Sometimes, the machine failing isn't actually Stanley's fault. He has no idea if this is one of those dimensions.

Stanley decides what he's going to do.

It's not hard to grab Ford the evening before the fair, when Ford was going to walk away and leave Stan alone on the swings. It's not hard to hurry back to (the place Stanley knows Pa won't allow him to call) their home with him. It's not hard to snatch up a bag and quickly pack some clothes for him and Ford tomorrow, not hard to rush Ford back out before he can question or complain, not hard to drive off to a motel that Stan's more than willing to spend his carefully-hoarded money on.

"What are you _doing?"_ Ford protests, as Stan gets them a room with one double-bed.

"Gonna keep you from freaking out over tomorrow," Stan tells him with a grin and a wink, and sets to making sure that if tomorrow does go wrong Ford will _know_ it couldn't have been Stan's fault.

There's another reason Stan chose this particular distraction, but. Stan doesn't want to think about that.

Stan gets Ford naked on the bed, and Ford is half-heartedly struggling, but the moment Stan offers to stop if he wants Ford freezes in place like he's trying not to scare Stan away. It's cute. Ford is cute, and Stan tells him so as he kisses his way down his twin's body, and Stan's never given anyone a blow-job but _boy_ did Bill like watching them happen (liked forcing a few Sixers to give him them, too, but Stan's not thinking about that) (much) and Stan remembers what Bill's seen and heard and really, he doesn't think he's doing too bad for his first time sucking dick. Ford sure doesn't think so, but he doesn't have any experience to compare it to, so maybe Stan's a bit dumb for feeling so proud of the sounds he gets out of his lover-brother-twin.

Doesn't matter. What matters is that _Ford's_ the first guy Stan sucks off, the first guy Stan swallows for (he remembers how much extra to charge for that, always good to have a backup plan for getting money when you're gonna be homeless tomorrow). What matters is that Ford's the first guy to fuck Stan's ass, and it's hilarious the prissy faces Ford makes at the idea and more hilarious the blissed-out faces he makes _during,_ and what matters more than anything in the world is that Stan gets to cuddle Ford the whole night long and pretend that they're staying together (and pretend it's not so he has an alibi).

And then it's the next day, _the_ day, and Stan drops Ford off at school so he can find out whether his machine impressed West Coast Tech and drives home, packs himself a bag, filches a few notes out of Pa's rainy-day funds because fuck it, why not?

He writes a note for Ma, leaves it on her table, writes a note for Ford, leaves it on his bed. He's out of here, because the one thing that sticks out the most from Bill's memories of all the Stanleys he saw while looking for stuff to use against Sixer is that Stan never did figure out to get going while the going was good, and Stan figures he might as well learn that now. Leave on a high note, after what he can already tell is going to have been the best night of his whole life, instead of hanging around to watch Ford leave him behind instead.

Stan pats the dashboard of his faithful El Diablo as he drives away. Unlike every Stanley Pines who got kicked out by Pa, he knows exactly where he's heading. Gravity Falls, Oregon.

He's got a cave to vandalise.

(And no idea what to do with his life after that.)

Ford almost feels like he's floating. Everything is perfect - he's going to West Coast Tech on a full scholarship! His father is proud of him! Stanley still loves him despite Ford having spent _years_ pretending it wasn't mutual, and Ford's pretty sure last night both of them lost their virginities! To each other! Ford has spent all these years panicking that anyone who looks too closely might see that he's a little _too_ attracted to his twin (though really, he can't be blamed for being attracted when Stanley is so strong and charming and -) but last night the receptionist didn't even care that they were sharing a bed!

Ford is going to West Coast Tech, and Ford is going to take Stanley with him, and he can't wait to find out what else two boys - two _men_ \- can do together and he's sure Stan can teach him -

The house is filled with noise. Ma and Pa don't notice Ford's arrival because - because Ma's yelling at Pa, saying it's his fault that - that -

Ford rushes to their room, because Stan can't have left - not after last night, not when Ford's only just realised that he can have this, that they can be together...

Stan's things are missing. Not everything, but the _important_ things, the things Ford looks for because Stan would never leave them behind - they're missing. Ford staggers, Ford looks around frantically, desperately - Stan's gone on ahead, that's it, that has to be it because _Stan wouldn't leave him **now**_ , he'll find a note or something to let him know that Stan's going to be waiting for him in Pasadena...

He finds the note.

> I love you, Sixer

Ford stares at the four words, and a distant part of himself thinks it's ridiculous that a love note could break his heart. The rest of him folds in on himself and tries to stifle his wailing, because he knows what this note means.

Stanley told him a few times about the monster Stan used to be. Ford never believed him before now.

Who but a monster would make a love note mean goodbye?

**Author's Note:**

> The Time Police don't let Stanley destroy the instructions on how to summon Bill
The Time Police also don't know how to tell the difference between Stanley and Stanford
This means Ford never _does_ read the fateful inscription 
Stanley finds this bitterly hilarious
Ford has a _lot_ of complaints by the time he hunts Stan down



End file.
